Cardiff Backs Off From Home School Law

A consultation report on a possible law to regulate home schooling has come in for severe criticism and been rejected as a good idea by over 80% of respondents.

The Education Minister launched a consultation on whether introducing legislation to force parents to register and engage with local education authorities had support amongst the public and LEAs.

Over 80% of parents responding to the consultation rejected the proposals, which included a possible legal right of entry into parents' homes.

As a result, the Minister has backed-off from introducing legislation, highlighting the very clear battle line drawn between parents, who overwhelmingly saw the moves as "state interference", and LEAs, who thought they'd like to start pushing their weight around inside people's homes because there could be welfare issues to consider.

A dark undercurrent in fact flows through the position of the LEAs.  Their responses show a clear prejudice against the whole concept of home schooling.  LEA responses seem to apply a suspicion that those parents who pull their children out of what are, within Wales, often dire schools, must have some motive other than alternative educational provision. 

As is usual for just about any public body trying to get its own way these days, the words "health and safety" are used as justification to enter homes and inspect just what's going on inside.  However, laws already exist to allow intervention where there is no evidence of reasonable educational efforts going on at home.  Similarly, there are laws to deal with those tiny minority who may be hiding something sinister by keeping their kids from school.

But this is clearly not enough for the LEAs.  Rather than accept the doctrine of innocent until evidence shows otherwise, they want to label everyone a criminal who must prove their innocence.  They very much want to see parents as suspicious simply for wanting to home school.  Their responses show a deeply troubling attempt at an extension of their mandates as educational authorities to something much more like a combination of police and social services.

One parent made the point, and I can confirm the sentiment, that dealing with a local authority was "the most stressful and time-consuming" thing she'd ever done. Across Wales, we have stories of authorities making false claims against parents, poor relations between schools and homes, and almost all 22 LEAs failing to meet those expectations for which they are paid handsomely to achieve.


Parents angrily made the point that LEAs don't, themselves, have a good definition of what a "suitable education" actually is, typically have a bias against home schooling for no good reason other than for being different, and cannot, in most areas of Wales, themselves deliver a suitable education.  Witness the PISA results over many years to find justification for this view.

The Minister has, for his part, exercised what can only be termed good judgement in immediately pulling back from legislation in this area.  Forging ahead would have led to an inevitable and rapid digging of deeper trenches between a state that wants to interfere deeper and deeper with personal lives, and those who are self-sufficient and see the Welsh education system for the total failure that it is.

The message from parents is clear: if the government provided education to an acceptable standard within Wales, they wouldn't have to sacrifice their lives to home schooling.  The LEAs must look at their own, appalling record sheet of failures before they start telling parents they don't know what they're doing.

In the end, the parent has a legal duty, not just a right, to ensure the suitable and sufficient education of their children.  That has always meant they have a choice to educate outside the state provisions, and even outside any formal school organisation.  This must never change, and local authorities must never be allowed to be judge and jury in their own cause.

Gwynedd Council - A Failure of Government

Gwynedd Council, strapped for cash (but not for those in 'important positions') has announced it will reduce bin collection frequency to once every three weeks from October.

Appearing on BBC news, a councillor (elderly, not very good at speaking english, you know the sort), asserted that "we can't keep on putting rubbish in the ground, those days are over."

Only three weeks to go before bin day...

Well, he has a point, of course.  But let's think about this for a while.  Putting things into the ground has been a legal aim for councils for very, very many years.  Legislation originating in Europe was complied with quite quickly across the member states, apart from one laggard - the UK.  Being a former imperial colonist, the UK knew better than everyone else, so just kept putting it off.

Now, the solution to not putting things into the ground is rather more complex.  But what's blatantly obvious is that you can't do it just by not collecting bins quite so often.  You don't generate less rubbish simply because the bin men aren't coming.  You just delay its entry into landfill, not avoid it.

The main reason Gwynedd won't end-up with less landfill with a three week collection period is that the people who generate all that packaging - the manufacturers - have never meaningfully been targeted by government.  No, they are a bit too difficult to tackle, and we have a free market, and so on.  So, here, have more cellophane around an individual biscuit, wrapped in three further layers of plastic, just in case.

As usual, it's a mild case of 'when there's a problem, hit the poor public'.  It is bad government, with very little thinking other than 'must save money' behind it.  Maybe, if councils stopped signing-up to expensive contracts with private companies who must make a profit, they could save money that way.  But, oh no, that would mean someone in the council would have to get up off their arses, instead of being made to feel important by private companies for doing very little other than holding sway over where the contracts go.

So, the challenge is to see (a) how much money Gwynedd really do save with three week collections and (b) by how much landfill volumes fall as a sole result of three week collections.  Oh, and (c), how much more fly tipping and toxic burning will take place, and how CCTV shut-downs will allow perpetrators to do so with impunity.

And all that's without even touching on the health effects of a bin, sweltering away for three weeks in the summer sun.

Nice one Gwynedd!  Another example of why local government is such a joke.

Anglesey: Vive la Revolution!

Here we go again!

As predicted and expected, Anglesey Council is well underway to ripping itself apart again.

Taken over by direct control from Cardiff a couple of years ago, a newly-elected council, drawing on re-drawn ward boundaries, is already splintering.

Anglesey: the latest, and unlikely venue for a 'revolution'.

Jeff Evans and Peter Rogers have formed a new 'Revolution' group, claiming that cuts and closures are a "fait accompli".  This, they claim, leaves councillors as mere bystanders as the hard line from Westminster is, for the first time since the financial crisis began, becoming sorely evident to Joe Public.

If the motivations are as they say, then Evans and Rogers are to be congratulated in focusing on super-critical analysis of what cuts are proposed, and what alternatives may exist.  The Council, on the other hand, seems intent on getting as many cuts through as quickly as possible, in order to meet their financial projections.

Rumours have it that a senior officer of the council has been suspended, pending an investigation surrounding an allegation of failure to cooperate with councillors.  As a result, the council seems to be on a sure course to self-destruction and so, one might even hope, setting itself up nicely for absorption by Gwynedd. 

Anglesey Council's Heavy Hand

Late last week, some protesters - witnesses say they numbered about 6 - gathered outside to protest about the alleged neglect of horses at an Anglesey farm.

The Council, together with the RSPCA and other agencies, had been involved with attempting to resolve the horses' claimed plight.

Anglesey Council's next security cordon for peaceful protesters?

The six protesters, however, were met with about twenty private security heavies, paid for out of your hard-won taxes.

So there you have it.  Politicians and authorities doing what it has always done in the face of dissent - put up aggressive, disproportionate barriers between it and the people who pay their salaries.

Anglesey Council - Hypocrisy Central

Anglesey Council has "categorically" stated that there will never be a nuclear waste repository on the island.

This reveals the monumental stupidity and sheer hypocrisy of this council and its noddy councillors, who have often been labelled a "basketcase" council by Private Eye.

Anglesey wants the good, but not the bad.

You see, Anglesey has, for the past several years, been enthusiastically embracing a new nuclear build - now to be called Wylfa Newydd, as though it were some innocuous family farm.  This, in addition to its mindless support of the existing Wylfa, now half a century old.

Anglesey council even decided years ago to trademark itself as "Energy Island", although their mandate for doing so is open to serious question.  

So, the message is precisely as we would expect from the parochial, provincial little people who make up Anglesey Council: we want the benefits of nuclear, but not the waste that industry generates, thanks.

This kind of idiotic argument reflects the populist, pathetic politics of recent years in relation to nuclear: those parties, like Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems, who had 'official' positions against nuclear, saw their local candidates warmly supporting the industry.

The message there was as hypocritical as that against nuclear waste: we want the votes, and opposing nuclear won't deliver them - or so they think.

An Anglesey councillor: "we want niwcliar jobs, not waste.  Baaa.."

Popular support for new nuclear on Anglesey is more an assertion and industry distortion, rather than fact.  An independent, academic-led survey of attitudes to new nuclear asked far more subtle questions of the Anglesey population.

The outcome of the survey by Bangor University researchers was in contrast to industry-conducted surveys: the majority were opposed to new nuclear, not in support.  It all depended on how your framed the question.

So, for the past few years, Anglesey politiicans and the council have been leading the people up a garden path, forcing them to accept new nuclear, new pylons, but no waste.

On all counts, Anglesey fails.  Its Council, already mired in cuts amounting to £20 million over the coming years, is apparently "categorically" refusing to consider the hundreds of millions of pounds offered on a plate, were they to host a repository for waste.  

If ever you needed an example of why people are disengaging with politics, this shameful episode must surely rank as a classic.

Collective Failure

A few days ago, the media rushed through the Executive Summary of the OECD report into welsh education, trying to make headlines before their competitors did.

Overall, the media rightly reported that the OECD study concludes that Wales is well behind other OECD nations, most notably in reading and mathematics, these being rather critical to living a life and finding a useful job.

The report highlights the lack of direction within the welsh system.  This, despite the clear message that Wales is doing very, very badly, and that a clear direction is urgently required.

But, nobody really seems to have a clue.  We're endlessly locked into 'well, Wales isn't like Finland', so we try to ignore everybody else's successes, whilst reinventing the wheel for ourselves - only to find it looks more like a square.

Accountability is highlighted in the report.  The welsh education system is singularly incapable of accepting proper, transparent and fair accountability.  Instead, the profession has ensured teachers and headteachers, LEAs and the education bods win Cardiff are all able to instantly wash their hands of any criticism from parents, carers or anyone below ministerial level. 

That needs to change, because avoiding accountability is the first sign of a failing system, and one that is trying to keep the status quo to maintain face.

Have a look at the graphic on page 24 of the OECD report. It is, without any doubt, depressing, showing Wales bumming along the bottom of the pile.  It is a terrible indictment of everyone within the welsh education system.  Nobody can avoid responsibility for this result, yet everyone is trying to do just that.

Astoundingly - and this is a figure you won't readily find elsewhere - a full two-fifths (that's 40% to you and me) of primary school headteachers have been judged by Estyn to be inadequate.  Read that again: 40%. 

Yet, approach any headteacher with concerns or complaints, and you'' quickly be shown the door, or run through a ridiculous 'complaints process' that nobody has any interest in operating in the spirit of improvement and transparency.  Instead, it's closed doors all the way, aided by nodding donkey governors who, all too often, are precisely those 'local worthies' alluded to by Michael Gove himself. 

The real point that is missed - or is diplomatically blind-eyed by the OECD, is that the welsh education system is a bit like a Masonic lodge or a mafia gang.  It is insular, self-interested and overwhelmingly defensive in its approach.  It is a bunch of people who clam-up on the outside world.  They are within the schools whilst you, the public, are kept firmly 'out there', where you belong and can't interfere.  By following this path, proper scrutiny is unachievable, which is precisely why this path has been followed and reinforced for so long.

Indeed, the OECD report repeats the Estyn view that governors' ability to tackle change is "weak".

Only a strict regime of performance assessment, proper and meaningful parental engagement, and true accountability will do for our kids.  Yet, there are today plenty within the system who will fight tooth and nail to avoid this coming about.  They prefer to damage our kids' prospects than damage their reputations and careers.

I say to those people, 'get out!', because your failure is laid bare in the appalling, terrible outcomes of the system you operate.

Taffia Banshees Out Again

Here we go again!  The Taffia are out to force-feed the welsh language on the unsuspecting populace of Carmarthenshire.

Following the shock!  horror!  finding that welsh is rapidly being dumped as a language by those in the county - which has a rather troubled council, to say the least - the Taffia are out in force (usually about four teenagers, typically kids of ministers, teachers and public sector workers).

The Taffia want the situation reversed.  One wonders about their mandate, but one can only presume, given the downward spiral in the use of welsh, that such a mandate is weak, at best.

It is a damning indictment of the Welsh Government that it readily gives in to the Taffia, and so fails to force-feed 'modern languages' - that is, those which will be of real, practical use - to kids at primary level.  Instead, in the state schools, welsh is seen as somehow a terribly worthwhile language that will somehow drag Wales out of the economic, educational and other doldrums it variously occupies.

The sad reality is that welsh is in decline for a number of complex reasons.  But in simple terms, it is a language spoken by only 250,000 people and falling, is of no use outside Wales (or even, much, within), and the kids of today are looking for something more rewarding than a secure but dull 'job for life' with the local council.

Good luck to them, because the best thing anyone in Wales can do is - yes - join the Germans, French, Polish and Russians, the vast majority of whom speak at least three, useful languages.